7-Eleven rolling out Apple Pay support in U.S. stores

Convenience store chain 7-Eleven has announced that Apple Pay will be available in “most” of its U.S. stores by the end of September. The rollout is part of a contactless payment strategy that will also see support added for Google Pay and Samsung Pay, and adds to other recent technology innovations by the company such as its “7-Eleven Now” iOS app that’s being rolled out in “select U.S. markets” to allow on-demand ordering of products from local stores, and also offers Apple Pay as an in-app payment option. “Frictionless experiences are the future, and digital payments are key to such experiences. Consumers prefer shopping at retailers that offer digital payment capabilities,” said Gurmeet Singh CDO and CIO of 7-Eleven in the company’s press release. Although 7-Eleven stores in other countries such as Canada have long allowed for contactless payments — and therefore supported Apple Pay by default as soon as it was available — the deployment of contactless payment terminals in the company’s U.S. stores expands the reach of Apple’s mobile payment service into a U.S. market where a convenient mobile payment service is the most useful.